Why I Hate the New York Yankees

If there is one thing I absolutely hate in this world, it is the New York Yankees. I'll get right to it, I hate this team with a burning passion and here is why.

Big spenders. The Yankees are a big money team. Their 2008 payroll of more than 209 million was by far the most in baseball. For years now, they’ve had this “outspend everyone” philosophy. Regardless of the cost, they will get their man.

This offseason, despite the economic recession the Yankees managed to spend half a billion dollars and three players.

Fortunately, GM Brian Cashman is one of the dumbest minds in baseball and Steinbrenner is even dumber for having failed to realize this and putting the blame on Joe Torre and anyone else he can find.

The Steinbrenner Family. This season George Steinbrenner finally passed on the ownership to his son Hank. While I was under the impression you couldn’t get any worse than George, this spoiled businessman appears to be the biggest douchebag of all time.

Let’s check out this quote from Hank in an interview this April: “Go anywhere in America and you won’t see Red Sox hats and jackets, you’ll see Yankee hats and jackets. This is a Yankee country. We’re going to put the Yankees back on top and restore the universe to order.”

Restore the universe to order. Right. I’m glad the Yankees found a leader that so embodies the need they feel to be on top in all aspects of baseball. It’s not enough that they have fans in New York. Their goal is to ruin everyone else’s fun in the process. I’m not about that, which leads to my next point.

Yankee Fans. With every other team, even Dodger fans, there is a chance that the person might be legit. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s that you can always count on a Yankee fan to be “that guy.”

Their fans carry themselves with a sense of entitlement, give off a vibe that they’re far better than you and are usually just greedy people who are only lookin’ out for number one.

The New York Media. It isn’t as bad as it was five to 10 years ago, but the media in New York has a tendency to produce incredibly overrated players. The Yankees play in a world where mediocre players become superstars (see Scott Brosius), and stars are turned into instant “hall of famers” (see Derek Jeter).

And I still can’t figure out how Jeter won a gold glove when anyone who watches baseball knows he is consistently one of the worst defensive shortstops in the league and is always near the bottom in range factor (stats that judge fielding). It’s the media at work.

Jason Giambi. Yes he manages to get his own category simply because of how pathetic he is. I still remember a few years ago seeing him do deodorant commercials where he had a line that said “It never hurts to have a little extra muscle.” All the while, unbeknownst to the American public, he was shooting himself up with steroids.

Newsflash Jason: Sometimes it does hurt to have that extra muscle and your post-steroid self hasn’t come close to what you were. I won’t even get started on Roger Clemens, but I’m fairly certain a good majority of their World Series teams from the late 90s were juiced.

1998 World Series Game One. This one is more personal, having grown in San Diego. Let me set the stage for you. Padres-Yankees in the World Series. Big market vs. small market. Good vs. evil. San Diego has jumped out to take the lead on the record-setting Yanks in Game One.

Bases loaded. Mark Langston facing Tino Martinez with two outs. 2-2 pitch. Langston throws a perfect strike which is called a ball. The next pitch Martinez sends into the seats, and the stage is set for a Yankee sweep.

Call me crazy, but I’ll argue that that call changed the series. You have a young team playing in the World Series for the first time, taking the lead in the hostile environment of Yankee stadium, and then that happens. If that ump makes the right call, maybe we have the momentum we need to take that series.

Jeffrey Maier. I’ll never forget this moment in baseball history. In the 1996 AL playoffs, Yankee fan Maier reaches down to catch a ball on the warning track that was headed for Baltimore Oriole Tony Tarasco’s glove. The umps rule it a home run and the Yankees take Game One and go on to take the series. Ridiculous.

The Yankees just represent so much more than a baseball team to me. They represent everything that is wrong with America. They represent this “win-at-all-costs” attitude, and if they fall short they’re pissed off and looking for people to blame.

In another move that mirrored his douchebag fans, Steinbrenner made excuses for his team coming up short, saying that they had suffered more injuries than any team in the HISTORY of baseball.

Newsflash Hank: Baseball has been around a long time and that was an incredibly uneducated statement by you.

On top of that, the Rays and Red Sox experienced nearly identical struggles in the amount of time players spent on the DL. However, their teams featured a couple things it would do you good to look up: how about "depth" and "farm system"? The inability to define these terms will hopefully cause the Yankees to fail for years to come.